In My TBR Stack:

Hot, Hot Chicken: A Nashville Story
by Rachel Louise Martin
Vanderbilt University Press
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

These days, hot chicken is a “must-try” Southern food. Restaurants in New York, Detroit, Cambridge, and even Australia advertise that they fry their chicken “Nashville-style.” Thousands of people attend the Music City Hot Chicken Festival each year. The James Beard Foundation has given Prince’s Chicken Shack an American Classic Award for inventing the dish.

But for almost seventy years, hot chicken was made and sold primarily in Nashville’s Black neighborhoods—and the story of hot chicken says something powerful about race relations in Nashville, especially as the city tries to figure out what it will be in the future.

Hot, Hot Chicken recounts the history of Nashville’s Black communities through the story of its hot chicken scene from the Civil War, when Nashville became a segregated city, through the tornado that ripped through North Nashville in March 2020.

On My Radar:

A Life on Nashville's Music Row
by Bobby Braddock
Vanderbilt University Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

If you know country music, you know Bobby Braddock. Even if you don't know his name, you know the man's work. "He Stopped Loving Her Today." "D-I-V-O-R-C-E." "Golden Ring." "Time Marches On." "I Wanna Talk About Me." "People Are Crazy." These songs and numerous other chart-topping hits sprang from the mind of Bobby Braddock. A working songwriter and musician, Braddock has prowled the streets of Nashville's legendary Music Row since the mid-1960s, plying his trade and selling his songs. These decades of writing songs for legendary singers like George Jones, Tammy Wynette, and Toby Keith are recounted in Bobby Braddock: A Life on Nashville's Music Row, providing the reader with a stunning look at the beating heart of Nashville country music that cannot be matched.

If you're looking for insight into Nashville, the life of music in this town, and the story of a force of nature on the Row to this day, Bobby Braddock will take you there.